Judge Andre Davis, retired Fourth Circuit Judge and Baltimore City Solicitor, speaks with Kramon & Graham's Steve Klepper about mentors and role models. In this episode they discuss Judge Davis's admiration for Judge Thurgood Marshall, his early experience at the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, law school at the University of Maryland, his clerkships for Judge Frank A. Kaufman and Judge Francis Murnaghan, Jr. and working for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Steve Klepper is the head of the appellate practice at Kramon & Graham. Their conversation continues in Part 2 of this podcast.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:30 Judge Davis's role models and inspiration from Justice Thurgood Marshall

00:06:20 Experience at the Housing Authority of Baltimore City between college and law school and later as a district judge

00:20:18 Role models and mentors at the University of Maryland Law School: Larry Gibson, Bill Reynolds, Peter Quint

00:23:05 The importance of judicial clerkship and clerking for Judge Frank A. Kaufman at the Court of Appeals of Maryland

00:35:45 Clerking for Judge Francis Murnaghan, Jr. US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

00:42:11 Experience as an appellate lawyer at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division

00:46:36 Experience in private practice

Speaking With Experts is produced for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to provide legal or professional advice or to constitute any type of sponsorship or endorsement.

Hello. Welcome. My name is Steve Klepper. I'm the head of the appellate practice at Kramon and Graham here in Baltimore. And I'm very pleased today to have with me retired Fourth Circuit Judge and City Solicitor Judge Andre Davis. Welcome.

Good morning.

So today's topic is going to be mentors and role models. And there will, of course, be a subtext of the running theme, I should say, of the appellate courts. But there's a lot more to the court systems, too. And I could spend the entire hour here just going through the highlights of your resume here, and I think we're going to get to a lot of those points. But rather than start off with all of that, I want to ask you, at what point in life did you say, I want to be a lawyer? And who inspired you?

Well, that's a very easy question for me, because it happened in a moment in time that is truly etched in my memory. I had aspirations as a teenager and in my early 20s while still in college, to be either a journalist or something else unspecified, I wasn't sure. I loved writing, and I spent a lot of time in my youth reading the sports pages here in Baltimore. And I loved what I was reading about the Orioles, about the Colts, about the Yankees, about everybody in in professional sports and high school sports. But what happened in my sophomore year at Penn, so I guess I was 19, I took a course taught by a University of Pennsylvania law professor whose name I do not recall to this day, which is a shame, because his lectures had a tremendous impact on me and my thinking. But it was a constitutional law course taught by a law professor to undergraduates.

Wonderful.

It's a large course. And I sat there transfixed over the many weeks of the course because it was there and then that I realized, for all that I had learned about Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement and the developments in constitutional law that I had grown to understand at some level even as a young adult. It suddenly occurred to me like an epiphany that for all the work that the judges were doing in righting the wrongs of this country, it was actually the lawyers who made it possible for the judges to do what they were doing. And in particular, of course, I'm talking about Justice Thurgood Marshall. Yes, it was Justice Marshall and his cohort from Howard and New York, Charles Hamilton Houston, and just so many Constance Baker Motley so many prominent names in the law who actually, as we know but for some reason, up until that point, my education had been deficient insofar as it had focused on doctrine and developments and judges, but not on the lawyers. And so it was at that moment, I suppose, halfway through the semester, that I said, that's what I'm going to be. I'm going to be the greatest civil rights lawyer since Thurgood Marshall.

I love that you're talking about Thurgood Marshall as a lawyer, because if you were to come up with a Mount Rushmore of the four greatest lawyers in US history, I think he'd be. On there, no question.

But if you were to talk about the greatest Supreme Court justices in history, he didn't seem to have the general passion for the day to day work of the Court to become the great justice, as great as he could have been. Would you agree?

I'm not sure I agree. I'm reminded frequently of Justice O'Connor's repeated statements of how being in the room with Justice Marshall changed her thinking, changed our outlook. So while Justice Marshall didn't write some of the great transformative opinions, he certainly joined many of them. And he did write several. He did Batson, for one. I think he wrote Batson. Maybe he had a concurring opinion in Batson. But in any event, I think his impact on the Court far exceeded his seeming limited output.

And maybe, I think, as a defense mechanism for him, perhaps he wanted to give off an air that he did not care as deeply as he really did inside. But I do recall something from the brethren of him leaning over to Justice White during an argument and saying, I'll trade you my vote for a first round draft pick.

Well, apparently Joan Biskupic's new book sort of revisits some of the horse trading that went on back then and still today.

And as we all know, Justice Marshall was a mentor for current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan who clerked for him.

That's right. And many others.

And many others. And the reverence with which those who clerked for him speak, speak of him, is really inspiring. So you took a few years off between college and law school, didn't you?

I did.

What did you do?

Worked for four years. I graduated in 1971, married and with a child on the way. So the immediate concern was well, actually, the immediate concern was, where do I go? Where do we go? And I love Philadelphia. Thought for a while that I would stay in Philadelphia with my family, but at the end of the day, particularly because the baby was on the way, we decided to come to Baltimore and settle in Baltimore. So finding a job was not easy. I was a history major and had always intended to go to law school, so I wasn't really looking for serious work during the period when college students were looking for serious work during that time. Of course, hanging over my head throughout the last couple of years of my college education was Vietnam. And we can talk about that a bit, if you like. Later. But all of these currents were taking place in my life. So long winded way of saying the first year I essentially worked in retail sales and then I got a job with the Housing Authority for Baltimore City, for which I worked for three years immediately before going to law school.

Did that inform your perspective as you entered law school?

Very much so. Very much so, on a number of different levels. I was a manager trainee, I think was my title, and I ended up working in housing management in Cherry Hill, at Cherry Hill Homes. Did that for a year and then for a year at McCullough Homes in West Baltimore and then for about six months or so at Lafayette Homes in East Baltimore. And then the last six months or so, I actually worked in the central office for Bob Embry. Not for Bob, but in Bob Embry's office. He was both the commissioner of Housing as well as the executive director of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. So those were very important years in my life because one, it was real life. It was getting up in the morning, going to work. I had a lot of responsibility due to the trust that some fantastic supervisors had in me. As it turns out, three of the four supervisors I had during that period were all very strong women. And I can't emphasize enough how formative it was for me to work for three very strong women who had their stuff together, worked in municipal government and taught me so much.

Part of my responsibilities during that period was actually to represent the Housing Authority of Baltimore City in Rent Court.

Really?

Exactly. So when years later I ended up in Rent Court as the presiding judge, not many people fully appreciated that I was not a stranger in that room. I had a very keen and well educated view of what goes on there very quickly.

So one of my mentors in life, Lee Ogburn, who was a principal here for many years and was the first associate to work out under Jim Kramon back in the 1970s, and he retired after several decades to go work for Legal Aid, and there he was in rent court and really enjoying life. What's rent court like?

Well, I don't know exactly what it's like today, but I can tell you that when I went there as an assistant housing manager for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City in 1973 and '74, it was chaotic. It was, I guess, the Wild West. And when I was there in 1988 as district judge, it was chaotic and the Wild West, and I made it my life's work during that period to bring order and dignity to those proceedings. And I think I achieved that. Others will have to decide to the extent anybody cares about that history. But I really enjoyed it because I enjoyed being a district judge, being close to people I enjoyed the traffic docket, I enjoyed the misdemeanor docket, and I enjoyed the housing, the rent court, the summary ejectment court docket. So much so, and without patting myself on the back, I was so good at it that Judge Joe Ciotola was then the administrative judge of the district court of Maryland for Baltimore City. He was kind of my boss, in quotes. And Joe is a wonderful, lovely man and a wonderful judge. And the rent court summary adjustment court assignment was loathed by all the judges on the court.

And at that time, the judges rotated in six month assignments. Perhaps they still do, but you'd sit on a criminal docket for six months, and then you'd go to rent court for six months. Nobody wanted to go to rent court. And so rent court was always the junior judge on the court was always assigned the rent court docket, the first rotation, and I was assigned the rent court docket. And I did such a great job, and I loved it so much, and I didn't make any secret of the fact that I enjoyed it. Judge Ciotola asked me to take a double tour, and I did. So I actually spent a full year in rent court. And this was at a time when you'll love this, Steve. This was at a time when the old Sears Roebuck building on North Avenue was transformed into a courthouse.

Oh, yes, in the late 80s, that's what that building used to be.

Oh, you didn't know that?

I did not know. I'm not from here.

I've got a story for you that you're going to just love, the Borgerding Courthouse on Wabash had opened a year earlier. And remember, this is at a time in the late 80s when the District Court of Maryland was still a baby court. I mean, it had been formed in the early 70s by constitutional amendment. And the chief judge, judge Sweeney, who was the chief judge over the entire District Court of Maryland, made it his life's work to professionalize and bring dignity to what had been and continued to be at that time really a back alley court. Almost. Not to put too fine a point on it, the court was still sitting to hear criminal cases in police precincts in Baltimore City. Absolutely. Again, I can share some experiences with you there. So Judge Sweeney, with Governor Schaefer's support and the legislative support, slowly but surely got cases out of police stations and into courthouses. Well, the so called east side courthouse at North Avenue and Hartford Road was a former Sears Roebuck and Company department store. And it was while I was sitting on the rent court docket that the court moved from the Gay Street location where I think it's now back there, but maybe not. But at Gay, right up the street, Gay and Fayette Street, the rent court docket moved to the basement of the Sears Roebuck and Company at North and Harford. And so I presided there for about six months as I had presided for six months down at the Civil Courts building at Fayette and Gay. That's where I cut my judicial teeth. I think I did a great job, frankly, to be immodest.

No, no one should be modest about bringing dignity to a court where you are, for so many people, their first observation, their first chance to observe the law in action.

I appreciate that. It's a huge docket, as it remains today. Maryland has one of the most asymmetrical summary ejectment proceedings in the country. And it was worse back then. It was much worse back then. Very few tenants had a lawyer. And in a peculiarity of Maryland law, in that court, under state law, landlords could be represented by non lawyers. Tenants could not. It's right there in state statute. Hard to imagine a more blatant violation of equal protection, even under a rational basis.

If anyone had brought that objection before you when you were a judge.

But what I can say about that period and my experience is and I've said it before, and really, no one to my knowledge has disputed this it didn't take me long to earn the respect of both the tenant community and Legal Aid was involved with some cases, but also the landlord community. This was at a time when Maryland and Baltimore in particular, was beginning to sort of experiment with and figure out how to work rent escrow ordinances and statutes. And so the idea was, if a landlord didn't repair serious deficiencies in an apartment or a house, the tenant could withhold the rent. And when the landlord brought the tenant to Summary Ejectment Court for non payment of rent, the tenant could pose a defense of violation of the Covenant of Habilitation, covenant of quiet enjoyment, and if the judge found sufficiently severe deficiencies, the judge could allow the tenant to pay the rent into escrow at the court. This was a big deal back then, and it gave the tenants leverage over some of the worst landlords who were not taking good care of their properties. So that was a very transformational time for me and for that court.

Quick footnote. I was doing something during that period that I would never do today, and no judge probably ever should do. When a tenant in the middle of a case, say at 11:00 in the morning on the early docket, if a tenant and a landlord or the landlord's representative had a dispute about the condition of the property on more than one occasion. Not every day, not every week, not even every month, but on more than one occasion. I would say, meet me at the property during the luncheon recess. And the court security officers, of course, thought that I was out of my mind, and maybe I was. But I would go over to Sandtown, Winchester, Rosemont, Harlem Park, where many of these properties were located. Sometimes South Baltimore. During my luncheon recess, get in my car without security, without anything, just get in my car, drive to the property, meet the landlord's representative and the tenant and do an on view of the conditions. And then they'd come back to court that afternoon and I'd make my ruling.

Well, just like a jury can view the premises.

Exactly. Precisely. And I didn't have to do that a lot after I started doing it, because the word got out. If you go into Judge Davis's courtroom and you make a representation about the condition of the property, either the tenant or the landlord's representative, you better be careful, because he is known to use his luncheon recess to do a jury view of the premises. As I say, I would never do that today, and I would never recommend any judge doing that today. But it was a different era, different time.

A different time. Now, I don't want to leap too far ahead, because we're talking about mentors and role models, but let's circle back to University of Maryland Law School. When you were a student there, did you have any mentors or role models there?

Oh, absolutely. First and foremost, of course, Larry Gibson. Larry Gibson, I just saw the other day, who lost his wife a couple of weeks ago.

I'm sorry to hear that.

She was very much a part of, they were a team in every respect, but Larry was the greatest professor I ever had, the greatest mentor I ever had, and is very, very responsible, very much responsible for any success, any professional success that I've had in the law. Close second, and maybe not even second, really, honestly. Bill Reynolds, also a professor at Maryland, now retired. Larry's still going strong.

Professor Reynolds Is still part of the community.

Oh, yeah, he's very much a part of the community. Bill was just wonderful to me. I took conflict of laws from Bill, took civil procedure from Larry and evidence from Larry. I spent a lot of time with them when I was in law school. Peter Quint was not so much a mentor, but just some one that I just so admired for his brilliance, for his teaching ability, for his friendliness. And the three of them and I have become actually friends. It's a remarkable thing that your mentors, people you look up to when you're a young, young professional, budding professional, you come to be be all good friends with them. That's just to name three. There were others as well.

And Professor Gibson, of course, has written extensively about Justice Marshall, and I'm sure will get very angry if he hears this, the way I characterize Justice Marshall.

Well, he'll debate you.

He'll debate me.

By the way, volume two is on the way. He was just talking about that recently. In fact, last week at the board of visitors meeting at the law school, he did a presentation about Justice Marshall well, about his career, about Professor Gibson's career. But he spoke, as you imagine, a lot, about Justice Marshall, and he says he's working hard to reduce the number of pages in volume two. It's already written. He's now got to rewrite it and reduce it by about a third.

That is the toughest part of writing.

Yes.

When did you learn what is a judicial courtship?

Well, that's a great segue, because I had no idea what a judicial clerkship was.

Because you're a first generation lawyer, right?

Oh, absolutely.

And so many of us show up to law school and don't know what a clerkship is when others are preparing for their clerkship applications from day one.

That's right. And frankly, at a law school like Maryland, I don't know. There was no real ranking back in the 70s when I was there, as there as there are lots of us news reports and others who purport to rank schools, including law schools. But the fact is, Maryland was, as far as I was concerned, a great public law school. You'll fall out of your chair if I tell you what the tuition was back in the can't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was not four figures. Well, maybe it was four figures, but very low four figures a year or something. Three figures per credit or something like that. But anyway, coming out of Maryland law school and schools of that ilk, if you will, there really were not opportunities to clerk for certainly not clerk on the federal court. My impression, and it's really only an impression, but basically at Maryland, the editor in chief of the law review got a federal clerkship pretty much from a Maryland judge, either a federal clerkship or a state.

The then Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Court of Appeals of Maryland. Others in the class, graduating class either didn't know about the opportunity to clerk, were looking for other opportunities. I, during this period, retained my goal of becoming a civil rights lawyer, and I was looking for jobs that would permit me to pursue that. So it wasn't until bingo, Professor Gibson and Professor Reynolds sat me down one day, fairly late in my 3L year, and said, we think you should apply for a federal clerkship. I was very high ranking, and I did very well in law school. I was high ranking in the class, and they perceived in me a potential to succeed as a law clerk. What they didn't tell me, of course, was that the person they had in mind was the person they had clerked for separate years. So both Gibson and Reynolds had clerked for Frank Kaufman because they were just a few years older. I mean, they are just a few years older than I am, and so they made it all happen, and I met with Judge Kaufman, and I got the offer, and lo and behold, there I was with a federal clerkship.

So if they hadn't told you, "you should be a law clerk," would it even have occurred to you to become a federal law clerk?

Absolutely not. In fact, at the time that I applied, at their encouragement to Judge Kaufman, as I say, it was fairly late. In my three l year, I had already accepted a job at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. I either had accepted the job or I anticipated that the job was going to be offered. I honestly don't recall exactly what the sequence was, but in any event, I think I had submitted an application and then withdrawn the application when Judge Kaufman offered me the job.

So I find it interesting that two Judge Kaufman law clerks invited you to apply to him, because, as I understand, Judge Kaufman was not the easiest judge to clerk for. And I've also learned that everybody has a Judge Kaufman story.

Correct on both counts. Now, if Professor Gibson and Professor Reynolds had deigned to disclose the full truth about what it would be like clerking for Frank A. Kaufman, I still would have done it. But I'm glad I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. I'll put it that way.

So my favorite story that I've heard and we could do a Frank Kaufman oral history podcast, from what I've heard, is that one of my partners was giving a ride home from an event to one of Judge Kaufman's law clerks and asked how the clerkship was going, and he just burst into tears. I don't think it was quite that rough for you, at least not how you showed it. But could you give us just one anecdote about Judge Kaufman's chambers or his courtroom?

See, you make it tough to limit me to one.

We could do a sequel, believe me.

No. First of all, let me say Judge Kaufman was just an incredible human being, an incredible judge, smartest. He's the smartest judge anybody's ever seen, and he cared deeply about people and about institutions that mattered to people. He really was a giant in the law, but he was kind of difficult. So what I remember I could share a number of different stories, but what I remember very poignantly was Good Friday of 1979, which was the spring of I clerked '78 to '79. And back then, believe it or not, Good Friday, I don't know if it was officially a federal holiday, but it was certainly unofficially a federal holiday. Everything shut down, including the court. I don't think that's true anymore. I think somebody raised the First Amendment objection to that.

Frankly, Christmas is okay, but Easter holiday?

Is a bridge too far. But of course, for Judge Kaufman, there was no such thing as a holiday. A day like Good Friday when the courthouse was closed and lawyers sort of had no excuse not to be in court. I remember like it was yesterday, Judge Kaufman conducted an all day. And when I say all day, I really mean, literally all day, an all day hearing on a motion to suppress in a tax evasion case that was assigned to him. And it just lives in my memory because every day was an adventure during that clerkship. But that day really lives in my memory. The only people in the courthouse. I'm sure there must have been some semblance of security around somewhere. But the only, this is 1979, the only people in that courthouse that day other than Judge Kaufman was his law clerk, Judge Andre Davis, his courtroom deputy, a woman named Sandy, his loyal and devoted courtroom reporter, Rose Elkins, I think was her last name. And the lawyers and the defendant in that criminal case, it was a tax case. So he was released on recognizance, and we just went at it for honestly, Steve, I'm not exaggerating eight hours. Eight hours on a suppression

hearing. Now, if you got enough time, I'd like to share very quickly what the issue was.

Okay.

I do want to because it's really good. It was fascinating. The quick story is the defendant was a French national who operated a hair salon in Washington, DC. And he made the mistake when he took a vacation to go home to France for a couple of weeks of putting one of his assistants in charge of the hair salon. And it turns out he was keeping two sets of books, and he instructed his assistant in his absence how to maintain the two sets of books.

Well, I believe Stringer Bell has something to say about that.

I'm sure he had no sooner gotten off the plane in France that the assistant said, I'm going to get in trouble, and he calls the IRS. So, long story short, they ended up conducting a search of the books, a search of his apartment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it was a very significant motion to suppress. And the defense lawyer was a very prominent DC lawyer who I just admired. He died not long after the hearing, in fact, in an automobile accident. But he was phenomenal on his feet. Of course, I forget who the Assistant US Attorney was, but he was also great. So I just learned so much at that point in my career. But that's that's one Judge Kaufman story. They're a lot.

I like that.

So the motion was denied.

Motion denied. It sounds like it probably should have been. So after that clerkship, you came to clerk for Judge Murnaghan on the Fourth Circuit. And tell me about how that came to me.

Yeah. So I was nearing the end, and by the way, I never took the bar exam in 1978. And the way Judge Kaufman operated, he had one clerk traditionally, he'd have one clerk start before the bar exam was given in late July, and one clerk who would start after the bar exam, who would have taken the bar exam. So I got the short straw that year. And so I actually started my clerkship with Judge Kaufman the week before graduation.

Oh no.

Yeah, the week before graduation. And it was interesting because you're going to love this. I think the outgoing clerk who gave me a week of training before he departed was none other and I've said this before, but I think you're getting a news flash here was none other than the Honorable Robert McDonald, late of the Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Really?

Bob McDonald was my predecessor law clerk. And I can't tell you how much I love Bob.

And to be clear, when you say late, Judge McDonald's is still. . .

In fact, he's still sitting as senior judges do. But he was so kind to me and in a week he prepared me as Professor Reynolds and Professor Gibson had not prepared me for what I was about to experience. And he was a great mentor. Speak about mentor. Bob was a real mentor, both in that time, the week we spent together and then later in the US Attorney's office. One of the biggest cases I tried while I was there was Bob. I was second chair to Bob McDonald. I owe a lot to Bob McDonald as a mentor.

And he went on to win the Harrell Award for Judicial Excellence. Just such a scholar. And who pointed you in the direction of clerking for Judge Murnaghan?

Judge Murnaghan.

Judge Murnaghan.

So I'm near the end of my clerkship with Judge Kaufman sort of preparing for the bar exam. Judge Murnaghan was in that cohort of appointees of Jimmy Carter appointees to new judgeships. The Congress created a bunch of new judgeships in early 1979, and Judge Murnaghan became the third Maryland seat on the Fourth Circuit. And out of the blue one day, I don't remember if Judge Murnaghan himself called me or if Larry Gibson called me first. I don't remember. I kind of think it was Judge Murnaghan who called me. Anyway, just before he was sworn in, after he had been confirmed by the Senate, he called me in Judge Kaufman's chambers. I think I was still working. I was preparing for the bar, but I was still working. He said, How'd you like the clerk for another year? And it took me all of a half a second to say I would absolutely be delighted.

And how did you know him?

I didn't know him other than very superficially by reputation. That's why I think Professor Gibson had probably talked to me in some fashion before I got the call from Judge Murnaghan to sort of test me out whether I'd be interested. But I knew him to be just a stalwart of the Baltimore bar, longtime partner at Venable, didn't know a whole lot about his reputation. But I had loved my clerkship so much and recognized the value that it gave me, given the opportunity to do another year. It was an easy call. I had accepted the job by then. I had surely accepted the job by then at the Civil Rights Division. And so I called the Civil Rights Division. I called Drew Days was actually the assistant attorney general at that time. And I called Drew.

He went on to become Solicitor General.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

Under President Clinton.

Clinton, yeah. And I said, can I defer a year? He said this was the Justice Department honors program. He essentially said, no, you can't defer. We don't do that, but you can reapply. And I did reapply, and I ended up going.

I'm trying to think of any program now that would say you can't defer because you just got a federal appellate clerkship. Yeah.

Those are different days.

Different days.

So I ended up with Judge Murnaghan for another year.

And I hear such reverence when people talk of Judge Murnaghan, who is the namesake of the Murnaghan Fellowship of Public Justice Center. Could you speak to that?

Very briefly. His reputation, as best as I was ever able to figure out was that he ate associates at Venable for lunch or something like that. He didn't suffer fools gladly. He was something of a taskmaster. Was driven, brilliant, committed, very committed to the community, served on the in fact, I think he was the president of the Baltimore City School Board, which is where Larry Gibson met him and became something of a mentee to Judge Murnaghan. But he was very invested in Baltimore, First Amendment scholar, represented The Baltimore Sun for many years. But working for him was a dream. Again, I cannot emphasize enough his brilliance. He was especially acute to what he didn't know. Obviously, having never been a judge but having been a brilliant lawyer, he understood that it was a very different task before him at this point. And he was 60 years old. So he'd had a full professional career, loved art. He was dedicated. If law was his first love, the Walters Art Gallery was his second love. And so it was just a wonderful year with him. Of course, he suffered his first stroke. He had a series of strokes but never took senior status in the 20 years that he was on the court. That first severe stroke occurred in February of my clerkship year.

Oh, no.

I mean, it was a severe stroke. Happened while he was traveling in Europe. He was airlifted to the Bagram Air base. I think it was. Bagram? No, not Bagram. That's Iraq, isn't it? Anyway, he was airlifted to an American Air Force facility in Germany after his stroke where he stayed for several days, and then he was brought home. He was at Hopkins for a couple of weeks, I think. And then he was at Good Samaritan doing rehab and he was back on the bench by June of that year. So he was extraordinarily strong. He lived in Mount Vernon. And within just a few weeks of his return to the bench, he was again walking down Cathedral Street to the courthouse every day and walking back somewhat with a limp. So just an incredibly strong willed and physically strong and brilliant human being. It was really one of the best years of my life. He was a gentleman and just was devoted to his clerks who loved him right up to the end.

That's wonderful. Yeah. So you finish that, and then finally you start with the DOJ honors program. You're at the Civil Rights Division. You're an appellate lawyer. Tell me what happens.

Well, one thing that happened was, remember, I wanted to be the world's second greatest civil rights lawyer. That was my goal, and I wanted to be a trial lawyer. And so I had no interest, despite my appellate clerkship, no real interest in going into the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division. And I was overruled. So they basically said, look, you've just come off this appellate clerkship, even though we wouldn't defer for you, but now that you've had this appellate experience, we want you in the appellate section of DOJ Civil Rights.

I can imagine some young law school graduates pulling their hair out right now hearing that you had to be tracked into becoming an appellate lawyer with the Civil Rights Division.

It's amazing, isn't it? I really wanted to do trial work, and so I said, okay, I'll go to the Civil Rights Division appellate section for a couple of years, and I'll transition into a trial section. On the other hand, maybe I like the appellate work. Okay? So I started in the appellate section at Civil Rights, got to work on a couple of really important cases, got to work with the Solicitor General's office on a couple of either cert petitions or cert responses. And then in November, two months after I started. . .

November 1980, something happened then?

Something happened. Something very transformative happened. Jimmy Carter lost the election. Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan became president. And the day after the election, we had a big gathering in a room just like this, and there were two or three or four of us who had just started that September. And the veterans in the office said, well, you folks have got to make a decision. You're going to stay here and do virtually no real civil rights work, or you're going to make a decision to leave and do something else. They were very upfront with us. It was very important. And I thought about it and remembering that I wanted to be a trial lawyer anyway and knowing that they were spot on when they said there would be no real substantial civil rights work under the Reagan administration. And so I was fortunate enough to get an offer from the then US Attorney here in Baltimore, Timmy Baker, who was nearing the end of his tenure as US Attorney and somewhat reluctantly because I didn't want to be a prosecutor particularly. But I accepted the offer because I wanted to do the trial work and develop my trial skills. And also because I knew that in Baltimore, unlike many other offices around the country, I could do both civil work defending the government as well as criminal prosecution. So that's where I landed in January of 1981.

And who are your mentors and role models when you were there?

Oh, wow. Dan Goldstein, Richard Bennett, Lynne Bataglia. So many. . . Bob McDonald. I'll stop there, but yeah.

Well, when I hear about the folks who clerked in the US Attorney's Office in the 1980s, and you just go down the list, and it's like, judge, judge. Just interesting time.

It really was.

But back then, it was more common to just spend a few years at the US Attorney's Office.

There was a pattern. Many people would go to a big firm for a year or two, leave and go either into the US Attorney's Office or the State Attorney General's office for a few years and then go back to the firm. That was a clear pattern. I was not a part of that pattern. I pretty much knew that I didn't want to do private practice. I wanted to do public service on the civil rights side.

But you did briefly do private practice.

I did. At Frank Bernstein, which no longer exists. This was at a time in the early 80s when law firms both in Baltimore and nationwide were growing like weeds, and Frank Bernstein made the mistake, as it turns out, great lawyers. It was not a litigation firm per se. It was really focused on corporate real estate. And of course, these were the go go days of real estate development and the firm imploded a few years after I left. But I was there for a year doing in a small litigation practice for our listeners.

We are going to stop this interview here at part one, and we hope that you will join us for part two of the interview.